Food aid has been the main response to repeated and protracted humanitarian crises in Lesotho since 2002. As part of World Vision’s emergency responses, it is implementing a pilot cash transfer programme in two districts in Lesotho – Maseru and Mohale’s Hoek. This paper reports the findings of fieldwork with cash, food, cash and food beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, using a comparative approach to explore the impact of cash transfers on gender relations.
Whilst the potential for cash transfers to provide an appropriate and affordable response to chronic and emergency food insecurity is acknowledged, there are concerns that cash transfer programmes may have significant negative gender impacts. At the heart of these concerns are assumptions that women are less likely to be able to control the use of cash within the household compared to certain types of in-kind assistance, and that men may use cash for anti-social expenditures – notably on alcohol and cigarettes.
The major findings of the research are:
- Gender relations in Lesotho are closely tied to shifting employment opportunities resulting from the retrenchment of men from South Africa’s mining industry and the emergence of new employment opportunities for women in Lesotho’s textile industry and in South Africa.
- Gender conflicts in households are common as a result of these changes, and are magnified during times of crisis, such as food shortages.
- Cash transfers do not significantly increase anti-social expenditures (alcohol and cigarettes), but do reduce gender conflicts and tensions within households.
- Although the World Vision programme is a short-term response to drought, there is some limited evidence that it will have a long-term positive effect on household gender relations.
- A whole-wage system is employed within households to manage and allocate income from cash transfer programmes. This leads to more equitable household expenditure than is found with wage incomes and social pensions for which other income allocation systems apply. In part, this equitable system is the result of aspects of the World Vision programme design and sensitisation process.
- Generational conflicts resulting from cash transfers are a much greater concern than gender conflicts and are particularly acute in households where the elderly are taking care of orphans and vulnerable children.
- Whilst many of the concerns about gender and cash transfers have proved to have little foundation in Lesotho, our findings in regard to generational relations suggests that, in countries where many households are living with HIV/AIDS, more attention needs to be paid to the impact of operations on generational relations within households.
- The equitable whole-wage system of managing cash transfer income that has emerged in Lesotho differs from systems for managing other sources of income (migrant labour income/remittances, pensions, public works, piece work). This system appears to have emerged in part owing to the design and delivery of the World Vision pilot. Thus, aspects of the World Vision pilot could inform cash transfer programming in other countries, and provide examples of best practice in reducing gender conflict and supporting gender equality within households.
Whilst Lesotho initially appears a special case – particularly because of the effects of the migrant labour system on household gender relations – some of these findings might be used to inform policy and programming in other parts of Southern Africa and beyond:
